It can be heartwarming when nostalgic memories pop to mind, especially when they involve people in your life that you love.
It can also be heartbreaking.
That’s the way I have felt recently when memories of my nephew, Ricky, pop to mind. Ricky died in late September of an opioid overdose—just one of more than 40,000 Americans in the past year to meet that fate. He was 40 years old.
(Photo provided)
Opioid medications boomed twenty years ago, as pharmaceutical companies reassured the medical community that patients were unlikely to become addicted to the drugs to alleviate pain. They were wrong.
More than 760,000 Americans have died of drug overdoses since 1999. Two thirds of them involved an opioid.
Suffering from lymphoma as a young man, Ricky was stricken by a second curse, as he became addicted to pain-relieving opioids. Even after his cancer went into remission, that second curse haunted his body.
In time, he was able to beat even that curse, as he became “opioid clean” a little more than a year ago.
But curses are insistent. His cancer returned. And so did his opioid use. Together, they killed him.
That’s why, when my favorite memory of Ricky pops to mind, it both warms and breaks my heart.
It was about 25 years ago, when Ricky was 13 or so. I was building a summer log-cabin home on a strip-mine lake in Wilmington, Illinois, and when it came time to shore up the seedy shoreline and turn it into an attractive breakwater and planting bed, I needed help. Manly, muscular help, the kind involving railroad ties, shovels, chain saws and sledge hammers.
My son was away at college, so I called Ricky and asked if he wanted to spend a few days at the cabin on the lake with me. “It’ll be all work each day until noon,” I told him. “But then we’ll spend the rest of the day swimming and fishing.”
“I’m in!” he said, always eager for a new challenge. He was athletic and lanky for a 13-year-old, and I had no doubt that he would be capable of the work.
We were blessed with perfect weather, and the job was finished in three days. Each afternoon the fish cooperated, too, and by nightfall we fell into our beds exhausted, our hands blistered and reeking of fish. When I woke him each morning to come have breakfast before starting work for the day, he groaned, but popped out of bed eager to greet the day’s labors, his reddish hair tousled into an unkempt nest, a sleepy smile on his face.
He was, it seemed to me at the time, the very picture of perfect health.
“I couldn’t have done all this myself, Ricky,” I said to him as we drove back home at the end of the three days. “I can’t thank you enough for all the hard work you put in.”
“Are you kidding?” he said. “Three days with sledge hammers, chain saws and fishing rods? That’s like heaven!”
And maybe that’s why that singular memory pops into my head so much lately. He was my sister’s eldest son, and he spent a lot of time playing in the back yard with my son and my brother’s son, who were five or six years older than he was. As the younger cousin who wanted to run with the big kids who were both fine athletes, he took a lot of hard knocks, but he kept coming back for more.
But finally, in late September of this year, the day arrived for which there was no comeback.
I went to a memorial for Ricky in a forest preserve in early October, and it was a joy-filled celebration of his life spirit. Ricky was a DJ, and the pavilion was jammed with speakers and mixers that thumped out a relentless mix of music, all generated by almost a dozen of his DJ friends. Photos and posters stood on easels and hung from posts, showing Ricky filled with life—but also with pain.
One photo showed Ricky at a DJ console, gazing over his shoulder at the camera, a joyful grin on his face. That photo was taken two days before he died.
The memorial was held on a perfect day—the kind of day that blessed our chainsaw and sledge hammer labors so long ago. All through the preserve, Ricky’s friends and family told tales about him, swaying to the beat of the music. It was a comfort to know that he knew so many people whose lives were touched by his spirit, and that his memory would live on in their hearts.
It wasn’t my kind of music, I have to admit, and it was hard to hear much of the conversation as the thump-thump-thump of the speakers resounded. It felt like being inside of a gigantic heart that beat endlessly with no hint of ever stopping.
And that, somehow, was comforting too.
TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.
